Primary School Evaluation Test, also known as Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (commonly abbreviated as UPSR; Malay), is a national examination taken by all students in Malaysia at the end of their sixth year in primary school before they leave for secondary school. It is prepared and examined by the Malaysian Examinations Syndicate (Lembaga Peperiksaan Malaysia), an agency that constitutes the Ministry of Education. Students in national schools (sekolah kebangsaan) are required to take five subjects, in addition to an aptitude test. Students in Chinese and Tamil national-type schools (sekolah jenis kebangsaan) are required to take two additional language subjects, totaling seven subjects.
Multiple choice questions are tested using a standardised optical answer sheet that uses optical mark recognition for detecting answers.
This exam is held annually on the second Tuesday of September. The score is calculated based on a bell curve, thus the passing grade is reflected by the yearly performance.
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The subjects that are taken in this exam include:
Each of the two Bahasa Malaysia subjects is offered at two different levels: the harder SK level and the easier SJK level, due to the difference in the Bahasa Malaysia syllabus taught in SK and SJK. However, SJK students may opt to sit for the SK paper with permission from their schools.
The English examination is divided into 2 papers.
Paper 1 contains 40 objective questions and the student has 50 minutes to answer them. Each question is worth 1 mark.
Usually, the questions should be in this placement:
Paper 2, which has subjective questions, contains three sections. A total of 40 marks has been allocated for this whole paper.
The mathematics examination is one hour and thirty minutes long, and is divided into two sections, a "section A" and "section B". Section A is multiple choice and consists of forty questions, all have a one point score value. Section B, like Science, is the subjective area of Maths. There are 20 questions here in total, the first five have a one point score value, questions 6-14 have a two-point score value, and the last five have a three point score value. Many students think that this exam is "tough" because section A's time duration is only 50 minutes and they can't finish it in time.
Questions that are frequently asked in this exam are fractions, subtraction, multiplication, division, addition, area and volume, mass, perimeter, decimal points, average, data, digit numbers, percentage, money, time, date and duration.
The science paper lasts for 1 hour and 15 minutes. This exam is divided into two sections, A and B.
For section A, students are given 30 multiple choice questions with a weight of one marks of each. For section B, students answer subjective questions. In the subjective paper, there are usually 3-5 questions and each question has 4 to 5 sub-questions which carry 1 to 3 marks depending on the question. Usually, the subjective questions will start with a diagram of an experiment and the questions are based on that diagram. The total weight that can be given here is 20.
When one adds the score of both sections, that person must multiply it by 2 to get the grand total. The first batch who took this exam were the candidates sitting for the UPSR year 1997.
Introduced in 2009, this test is used to evaluate students' aptitude and are written in the pupil's own language.
The one and a half hour test comprises 61 multiple choice questions, divided into three sections based on three core areas namely thinking skills, problem solving and decision making. Students are graded according to band scores, ranging from Band 1 (Extremely Limited User) to Band 6.
After every exam,the exam paper wil be brought to any examining centre across states of Malaysia. The places of examining are secret to public, but some person spoke that the invigilator can randomly send the papers to any examining centre. Every objective sheet will be examined by computer, and every subjective papers will be examined by examiners. After examining all the papers, the marks will be put into the online systems. There will be some meetings that will set the mark grades for every papers (Standard mark for 'A' grade is 80 marks above, but with analyzing every marks and questions, it may be lowed to 70+ marks above). Then result is printed and distributed to every District Education Departments where the candidates live. The results usually announced on the last Thursday school day (Second last day of school, except Terengganu,Kelantan and Kedah, it is the last day of school).
In 2005, several changes were made to the format of the 2 Malay papers, Pemahaman and Penulisan:
For section A, a picture will be given. Then, pupils must build five compound sentences based on the picture. The suggested time to answer this section is 15 minutes. The marks allocated for this section is 10.
Occasionally, however, pictures might not be provided and to substitute that, candidates might be asked to write sentences on a graph, a pie chart, multiple images, or a time table.
Section B is similar to the previous format of the Penulisan paper. For this section, candidates must choose one of three karangan or essays to be written on the UPSR paper. The suggested time to answer this section is 35 minutes. The total marks allocated for this section is 30 marks.
For Section C, there is a short story that contains some moral values. The student must write a paragraph containing the moral values. Pupils who get SK (Sekolah Kebangsaan) paper must give at least 5 moral values; pupils who get SJK (Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan) paper must give 4 moral values only, unless given other instructions. The suggested time to answer this section is 20 minutes. Initially, the pupils were supposed to write their moral values in more than fifty words (SJK - forty), but now, they have to write it in less than fifty words (SJK - forty). The total marks allocated for this section is 20 marks.